


No Spiders in Heaven But Teatime in Hell

by Ciremme



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Epiphanies, Experimental Style, Gen, Heaven & Hell, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Oblivious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Oblivious Crowley (Good Omens), POV Experimental
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:33:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27634828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ciremme/pseuds/Ciremme
Summary: When the opportunity arises, they have separate epiphanies about each other.The story has a split-screen format that can be read from left to right or top-down twice or however you choose.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	No Spiders in Heaven But Teatime in Hell

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Good Omens exchange 2018.

**No Spiders in Heaven  
**  
  
|  **But Teatime in Hell  
**  
  
  
---|---  
The wide, immaculate stairway takes Aziraphale up to a door that opens without sound. A motion detector immediately turns on all the spotlights on the ceiling of the hall. They radiate a white, smooth, but ultimately icy kind of light.  
  
| Uneven footsteps creak on their way downstairs. In the kitchenette, Crowley sees the three reading lamps that always seem to be on duty: a green Banker’s lamp, a bronze Malvern, and a dim one with a lacy shade that was white a century ago.  
  
  
He pockets the minimalist key-ring and gives a start when the automatic door closes behind him. After standing still for a moment, he exhales, shoulders tense and eyes warily scanning the polished floor.  
  
| He glances through the front window, which reflects three mismatched lamps and a demon in a bookshop. The Bentley glints in the rain next to the pavement, where a parking spot conveniently materialized an hour ago.  
  
  
“It’s gigantic,” Crowley had claimed. “Like a tropical, eight-tailed rat. Only furrier.”  
  
| “I’m taking the bus,” Aziraphale had said. “Why don’t you get some rest?”  
  
  
So far, Aziraphale can’t see any spider. He takes a few steps across the hall just to pause again and listen to the whirring silence. He has never been in Crowley’s flat without the demon nervously glued to his side.  
  
| Promptly, a red double-decker bus splashes past, and Crowley imagines the angel squeezing his way through a soggy crowd of scowling commuters. But Aziraphale should have reached the flat by now.  
  
  
Of all things the place has always seemed strangely sacrosanct to him.  
  
|  _My flat_ , he thinks with a shudder, _and what it contains._  
  
  
As strange as this diction might be, his presence here feels like a breach against something he can't otherwise put into words. All the more, he needs to hurry up and finish what had brought him here.  
  
| He turns back to the kitchenette, his hands blindly reaching for kettle, tray, and caddy in the dimness. He might as well make some tea. Aziraphale could probably use some later.  
  
  
After checking the vast bathroom and high-tech kitchen, Aziraphale decides that the spider must be in either the bedroom or the lounge. By the time he reaches it, he feels positively blinded by the omnipresent neon light.  
  
| After preparing everything, Crowley saunters back to the shelves and sprawls in an antique armchair that’s unbearably uncomfortable unless he’s the one sitting on it. Half-closing his eyes, he listens to the gentle rainfall.  
  
  
When the lounge glares at him with the wideness of an auditorium and the hospitality of a laboratory, he remembers that he has never felt particularly welcome in any one of Crowley’s domiciles.  
  
| Now that Crowley thinks of it, he can’t remember whether he has ever been here without the angel chatting or rummaging around in the back. Despite its warmth, the bookshop seems strangely void without him.  
  
  
For as long as he can remember, Crowley’s apartments have been painstakingly clean and fashionable. Everything that can gleam gleams, no fabric ever dares to crease, dust is non-existent, and the thermo-hygrometers installed on every wall read 19,5°C and 45% come sunshine, come hail.  
  
| As if hit by a belated reminder, he pulls himself up and looks at the bookcases one by one with an expression he considers slyly triumphal. He can’t let this opportunity slide to sneak around a bit. Or can he? Maybe there are some steamy titles hidden here somewhere?  
  
  
Once, in the 1970s, Crowley even asked him to wait at the door to prevent Aziraphale’s corporeal presence from messing with the temperature and humidity of the place.  
  
| Books are the angel’s weak spot, and Crowley treasures every piece of compromising material he can find—for example, to get back at the angel for calling him obsessed, for the zillionth time.  
  
  
Aziraphale sighs with the memory of how cuttingly he’d retorted that he didn’t mind waiting at all since there were surely places in the _Arctic_ more hospitable than Crowley’s flat.  
  
| Crowley bristles at the memory. That misbegotten spider _did_ look huge, and it has no business scuttling around in the most stylish flat of the 20th century.  
  
  
_Then again,_ he muses on entering the lounge, _being obsessed often also means to be oblivious_.  
  
|  _It’s not obsessive to want a spider-free place_ , he decides. _Doting on dusty, misspelt Bibles is._  
  
  
Aziraphale finds the spider with a glance. It’s on one of the plants lining the windows. Upon his entrance it hurries over a broad leaf and crawls halfway down the trunk, before stopping as if something important were about to happen.  
  
| Fuelled by this thought, Crowley jumps up. There has to be something. Something surprising, something questionable, something _indecent_. He starts walking along the shelves, determinedly scanning spines and covers.  
  
  
Aziraphale’s eyes slide from the spider to the row of plants, and then to his own reflection in the glass pane darkened by night.  
  
| “Wilde, Seneca, Steinbeck, Zola, Gorki, Kaléko,” he reads. “Hah, five of them have ended up with us!”  
  
  
And for a short, white-blinding moment, he doesn’t see Crowley’s lush plants across the room. He isn’t surrounded by the walls of a narrow earthly dwelling. Instead, he sees a row of angels, all white robes and majestic wings, with their haloed heads bowed in nervous expectation.  
  
| He gets a pen and an unopened electricity bill from the kitchenette to proceed more methodically with his survey. But, after a few steps, he stops and stares at the envelope with disbelieving eyes. He has already covered it in pen-strokes from front to back.  
  
  
Before he can take another breath, the wings are leaves, and the clouds are walls again. From its spot on the plant, the spider is still staring at him.  
  
| With halted breath, he raises his eyes and registers the rest of the shop as if it were suddenly lit by the merciless rays of a mocking sun.  
  
  
“Oh,” Aziraphale says. “Oh _dear_.”  
  
| “Oh,” Crowley says. “Well, _bite me_.”  
  
  
He paces from one end of the room to the other, a distance so generous it gives him enough time to think over this strange vision a few times. It’s not that hard to understand, really.  
  
| He drops the envelope and starts zigzagging the room, looking at the books he has known for centuries with fascinated eyes. Eyes that can’t unsee the pattern forming before them.  
  
  
“He’s mocking us!” Aziraphale blurts at last, his voice torn between indignation and laughter. “This whole place is a parody of Heaven!”  
  
| “For the love of — _anyone_ ,” he curses at last. “This is the most blasphemous place on Earth, and it’s hidden in plain sight!”  
  
  
The spider scuttles up the stem of the lush ficus tree before stopping again. Its pedipalps are slightly stretched in Aziraphale’s direction, as if it was, in fact, listening.  
  
| The bell above the door jangles, and Crowley spins around with a wild expression that might have paralysed the two customers had it not been too dark for them to see his face.  
  
  
“That’s why he’s so obsessed with his apartment,” he continues, his voice growing quieter. “That’s why everything in here has to be perfect and completely controlled by him. He’s _God_ in here! Only a more high-tech, trendier one.”  
  
| “Hallo?” one of them calls. “The sign says open.”  
  
“The sign’s a lie!” Crowley shouts back. “Now, get out while you still can.”  
  
  
Aziraphale paces the room one more time, his brow furrowed and eyes glazed over, before he slowly draws closer to the row of plants.  
  
| They leave with a hectic clanging of the bell, and Crowley catches his breath. Then he turns and stares up at one of the crowded shelves.  
  
  
“And you,” he says, “are his heavenly host, his mighty green-winged army. I know that, from time to time, he singles one of you out to disown and banish to my bookshop forever.”  
  
| “He pretends to be a seller of books,” he whispers, “but he’s really a collector of souls. And whenever he deems one of you fellows worthy of his special standards, you’re not allowed to leave ever again.”  
  
  
He offers his hand to the spider and watches it crawl from his fingertips to the middle of his palm. It’s barely the size of a Cadbury Button.  
  
| Crowley pulls down a slim volume and flicks through it at random. It’s a story full of riddles, shadows, and canyons. All of them are.  
  
  
“Shoo, you cheeky girl,” he says after a while, a half-smile tugging at his mouth. “What makes you think I’m not taking both of you?”  
  
| “Well,” he mutters, starting to walk back to the armchair without lifting his eyes from the pages. “I might as well start to take some notes.”  
  
  
Later, on the bus, Aziraphale hugs the ficus to his chest and ignores the soggy crowd of scowling commuters that surrounds him.  
  
| He flips page after page, deaf to the drone rush hour, which rises and ebbs outside. For once, he even forgets the coil springs of the chair.  
  
  
_It’s almost embarrassing that I haven’t seen it until today_ , he thinks. _Then again, he doesn’t know what he’s doing either. Creating this mock-Heaven and mock-torturing these silly plants when he has an actual angel at hand…_  
  
|  _No one will ever know I didn’t figure this out until today_ , he decides. _On the other hand, Aziraphale is just as clueless. Can you believe it? The only angelic agent on Earth, building his own private version of Hell._  
  
  
Aziraphale gets off the bus, still lost in thought on the way back. Ought he to tell him or not?  
  
| Crowley rises and walks to the kitchenette, where he flips on the kettle. He won’t tell Aziraphale, of course.  
  
  
_No_ , he decides. _That would outright qualify as rubbing it in and ruin whatever little fun Crowley has with these posh, cold places._  
  
|  _Either he’ll be mad, or he’ll smile and dismiss it_ , he thinks. _And, in both cases, I could ruin one of the few guilty pleasures he has._  
  
  
Shifting the plant from his chest to his hip, he fumbles for the keys with hands that feel chilled by the dampness of the air. The smile on his face fades to what he hopes is his habitual expression of noncommittal friendliness.  
  
| Carefully, he pours scalding water into the teapot and adds it to the mugs on the tray. The burn of fondness in his heated cheeks blurs beneath a casual grin, but refuses to leave.  
  
  
_It’s nice to be a step ahead of that silly boy for once_ , he tells himself as he turns the key in the lock.  
  
|  _It’s nice to be a step ahead of that impossible bastard for once_ , he tells himself as he hears the door lock open.  
  



End file.
